Of all the reasons that Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson can come up with for not fighting one another yet again, that is the one we’d better not hear.

They can tell us they are afraid of one another.

They can admit they would each rather go their merry way raking in easy cash to fight easier opponents.

They can try to blame it on HBO and Showtime, which for boxers is the modern equivalent of “Mamma won’t let me.”

If all else fails, they can make something up.

But neither one of them better insult us by saying there isn’t enough money in the fight, or they’re not getting enough of it, or the other guy is getting too much of it.

I, for one, don’t want to hear any of it.

Not now, with the economy in a nosedive, U.S. troops in harm’s way in Afghanistan and more than 3,000 bodies still buried beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center.

They ought to just shut up and fight. They’ll get paid. Plenty.

From the information I have gleaned from people who should know, Lewis and Tyson can expect to earn between $18 million and $20 million for a maximum of 36 minutes work, and probably less.

If the fight takes off, they each could pull down close to $25 million.

So what are they waiting for? Two weeks after we were told there were no real obstacles to getting the fight made, the fight hasn’t been made.

Is it the money?

It better not be.

From our athletes, we have come to expect, and even overlook, cowardice and sloth and irresponsibility and dishonesty.

But we’re still not forgiving greed. Not now, anyway.

Two weeks ago tomorrow, Lewis knocked out an underprepared and overconfident Hasim Rahman in Las Vegas to regain the heavyweight title.

Immediately afterward, there was a lot of tough talk going around, from Lewis and his faction, and – through third-party sources – from Tyson.

They wanted each other, it was insisted, and they wanted each other now.

Plus, there was conciliatory language, from HBO and Showtime, who were believed to be the biggest reasons why the fight could never be made.

Now, the TV suits say they will step aside.

And the promoters of Lewis, Main Events, consider Tyson’s “advisor,” Shelley Finkel, practically family. After all, it was his money that got them started 20 years ago.

This should be one of the easiest deals to make in boxing history. They even have a working date, April 6, 2002.

So why hasn’t it been done yet?

It can’t be the money. Can it?

According to sources, the site fee will be a record $12 million. Foreign TV rights are starting at $12 million, too.

That’s $24 million in the pot before a single pay-per-view subscription has been sold.

If Tyson-Lewis does even half as well on PPV as Tyson-Holyfield II – and it should, even in wartime and recession – that means 1 million homes, at $50 a pop.

After the cable distributors take their cut, that leaves another $25 million for the fighters.

Now, I want to hear one of these two pugs start complaining about money.

Tyson, for one, got paid a ridiculous $25 million to fight Peter McNeeley. Just wait till I hear him squawk about having to “settle” for the same amount, or perhaps a little less, to fight Lewis.

As for Lewis, rarely has an athlete been paid so much to prove so little. (There is, of course, Allan Houston). His middle name is Claudius, but it should be Overpaid.

Thanks to Don King’s attempt to buy back the title, he got $9 million for a 1993 defense against Tony Tucker. In 1996, he grabbed $4 million not to fight Tyson so that Tyson could fight Bruce Seldon instead.

And in his two fights with Holyfield, Lewis took home nearly $30 million.

Boxing won’t need to throw any benefits for Lennox Lewis the way it did for Joe Louis.

So he better not hold out for 60 percent of the purse, as his people are threatening. Even they know Lewis won’t sell 30 percent of the tickets.

But this shouldn’t be a problem. These two guys like to represent themselves as the toughest men on the planet.

They claim to want to fight one another for reasons that have nothing to do with the paycheck.

Reasons like pride and legacy and boxing history. And, they don’t like one another.

Those things are still there for both men, plus an awful lot of money.